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PS4 game round-up: Thoughts on four day-one exclusives

Will Resogun, Killzone, Knack, and/or Contrast convince you to upgrade?

We've expended quite a largenumber of words talking about the PlayStation 4 as a piece of consumer hardware. In the end, though, a game system's value comes down not to its hardware or its features or its interface, but to the new games it can run.

To that end, we wanted to share some in-depth impressions of the exclusive-to-the-PS4 titles that were made available this week alongside the system's launch. These aren't full reviews since we haven't had a chance to finish any of these games yet, but we feel we've spent enough time with each to get a good feel for how they play and how they make use of the PS4's power. Here, then, are our impressions of four launch titles, in descending order of how much you should want them.

Resogun

Who knew the highlight of the PS4 launch lineup would be an ultra-modern take on the arcade classic Defender. Much like that older shoot-'em-up, Resogun takes place on a 2D play field that loops around on itself as you fly from one end to the other horizontally. This time, though, you can see the cylindrical map curving around back into the screen on the edges of the screen, along with a whole lot of random crap floating around in the background.

Resogun also improves on the Defender formula with simplified controls and the ability to fire in either direction, even while flying in the opposite direction. You can only fire horizontally, though, which makes careful lures and positioning more important than in similar games like Geometry Wars.

There's an almost insane amount of stuff going on in every screen of Resogun, with tons of flashy particle effects and debris being pushed around by the PS4's processors. Somehow, though, it never gets too visually overwhelming; careful use of color and shape makes it easy to quickly and intuitively distinguish the enemies and bullets you need to avoid from the background detritus. The only exception to this is the tiny green humans you're tasked with saving every few minutes, who tend to get lost in the maelstrom despite a helpful arrow pointing you toward them (a radar would have been nice here).

There's a good deal of variety in enemies, each with their own attack patterns that require different strategies of feints and movement to handle effectively. When the throng of enemies gets to be too much (and it definitely will if you play on harder difficulty levels), Resogun gives you a wide variety of ways to get out of sticky situations, including an invulnerable quick dash maneuver, a set of screen-clearing bombs, and a super-powered mode that slows everything down and gives you a giant, overpowered laser.

Despite these escapes, the game can be punishingly difficult, even on the "Normal" difficulty. A single false move leads to death, and you only have three lives to complete levels that can go on for 10 minutes or so before concluding with screen-filling, no-holds-barred bosses. Things get much easier (and more enjoyable) if you have a co-op partner (local or online) to help handle the load, since the game doesn't seem to scale up the number of enemies to account for the second player.

Resogun probably could have existed as a largely unchanged PS3 game, and so it doesn't do much to justify the investment in the new hardware within a PS4. That said, it's probably the most fun you'll have with any of the PS4's exclusive launch titles.

Killzone: Shadow Fall

The obligatory exclusive first-person shooter launching with the PlayStation 4 checks all the standard boxes on the FPS checklist, but so far it hasn't fully hooked us. It's not bad, by any means, but it doesn't really do much to justify its existence next to dozens of other, similarly polished shooters.

After an absolutely plodding and hackneyed father/son-focused introduction, Killzone's story does a good job of painting a general aura of authoritarian oppression in a war between humans and the alien Helghast, working overtime to layer on some moral ambiguity over which side is "good" and which is "bad" to boot. Still, I found it hard to follow the specifics of the shifting narrative and to care much about the characters who seem to exist mainly to move the plot along.

None of that matters too much to the gameplay, though, which follows the genre standard by giving you an objective to reach and then throwing in a bunch of shootable enemies between you and that objective. And I do mean a bunch: Killzone seems to revel in sending absolutely massive strike forces of nearly identical enemies to take down your single super-soldier (who occasionally gets computer-controlled backup).

To the game's credit, these enemies aren't the type to just sit calmly behind cover and pop up for occasional pot-shots at you. Instead, they tend to surround you from all directions, flanking and making moves to force you out of your comfort zone and into a new position. It can all get overwhelming quite quickly, and you can die frequently because of enemies you don't even know are there (the lack of any convenient radar or mini-map makes it that much harder to get your bearings in these firefights).

The only way we were able to get a handle on battles, generally, was by sending out a trusty floating attack drone to lay down some cover fire, creating both a good distraction and some crossfire to mess up enemy tactics. The drone has a number of modes, including a temporary shield and a quick-travel zipline, but we found ourselves leaning heavily on the attack mode as the only means of survival.

Speaking of the drone, Killzone makes use of the DualShock 4's touchpad to decide which mode the little guy is in at any time, requiring the player to swipe in a given direction to change things up. We found reaching over to make this swipe rather annoying, and it made us wish that these functions were assigned to buttons or the d-pad. Instead, the d-pad is cluttered up with commands such as bringing up your heads-up objective marker or sending out a sonic ping to find nearby enemies.

If you're looking for a game to show off how much more detailed and crisp the PS4's graphics can be over what it has been on previous consoles, Killzone is probably your best bet. Gameplay-wise, though, the game feels like another rather unobjectionable, rather unremarkable entry in the overcrowded first-person shooter genre.

Knack

Mark Cerny's effort to create the PlayStation 4's version of Crash Bandicoot (well after he created the original PlayStation's Crash Bandicoot) largely falls flat. The problems start with the story, which has an easy-to-ignore blandness centered around a group of humans using mysterious ancient relics to fend off goblins equipped with modern technology. To this end, the humans have created Knack, a sentient collection of magnetically charged relics that can grow by accumulating more of the tiny metallic bits into his form.

Every single character in this story, Knack included, immediately comes off as forgettable. You get the feeling that the game is simply going through the motions and failing to develop in cut scenes that linger on just a little too long. The gameplay suffers similarly, structured as a series of disconnected melee combat challenges that all feel extremely similar. The enemies may change (and there's a decent variety and verve in their visual design, at least), but the extremely basic gameplay does not: dodge the enemy attacks using jumps or a quick tap of the right stick, then respond by mashing the single attack button until the enemy is dead.

For a game that seems tailored for all-ages of family fun, Knack is also surprisingly unforgiving. It usually only takes one or two hits to go from a full health bar to completely dead, even on "Normal" difficulty, and checkpoints are spaced out far enough apart to require quite a lot of repetition of battles that were already completed. Enemy attacks are barely telegraphed, and your foes show a surprising amount of self-preservation in dodging your own attacks. The simplistic combat mechanics make this added difficulty come off as more frustrating than engaging, though, especially when death comes from a cheap shot originating across the screen.

There are some interesting design choices in Knack, though, including the titular character's ability to grow ever larger by collecting more relic pieces. It's pretty satisfying to grow large enough to easily dispatch some of the same tanks and goblins that were once overbearing giants. Still, the simplistic yet frustratingly tough battles and forgettable characters turn Knack into a mediocre time-waster that's far from being a memorable new mascot for the PlayStation 4.

Contrast

This heavily hyped indie darling starts off with an interesting story concept infused with a sense of magical realism. You control the invisible friend to a precocious little girl, determined to sneak out of bed to spy on/help out her parents as they struggle to reconcile their fractured relationship and to make a living. The mobster-filled, surprisingly dark jazz-era tale is told through some beautiful settings and animation, with most characters mysteriously represented only as dream-like shadows on a wall. The game also shines with a great musical score that comes packed with some catchy, fully vocalized songs. The only major fault here is some hit-or-miss voice acting.

Contrast's gameplay is similarly unique, centering around your ability to turn into a shadow, blend into walls, and walk on the shadows cast by nearby objects to reach areas you can't get to in your more corporeal form. The designers come up with a number of clever puzzles that make use of this conceit, such as riding the giant shadows cast by characters as they gesticulate and move about during an argument. More often, though, getting a useful set of shadow platforms means carefully adjusting objects in the real world to cast some darkness in just the right place, a meticulous process that ends up being a bit annoying.

Speaking of annoying, the game suffers from pretty frequent glitches that get in the way of enjoying its better-designed bits. We constantly found ourselves getting stuck on objects, phasing through bits of scenery, losing a convenient camera angle unexpectedly, or popping out of shadow form at inopportune and uncalled-for times. The controls feel way too loose and floaty for a game that requires such precise platforming, as well.

Overall, Contrast's engine feels like it needs another coat of polish to match the unique, inventive look and feel of its design. We'd love to see more time taken with a sequel that wasn't struggling to make it in time for the launch of a new console.

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl